The U.S. administration is cracking down on cheap products sold out of China by companies such as Temu and Shein by saying that companies are no longer exempt from tariffs simply by shipping goods that they claim to be worth less than $800.
U.S. President Joe Biden would no longer exclude these “de minimis” imports from tariffs under a proposed rule released Friday to tax all imports if they’re covered under Sections 201 or 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, or Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
Importers mainly from China have used the de minimis exemption for shipments of $800 or less to flood the U.S. market. The number of these shipments has jumped from 140 million annually to over 1 billion a year, according to a White House statement.
The action comes at a delicate moment for the world’s two largest economies. The United States has tried to lessen its reliance on Chinese products, protect emerging industries such as electric vehicles from Chinese competition and restrict China’s access to advanced computer chips. For its part, China has seen manufacturing and exports as essential for driving economic growth as it has struggled with deflation following pandemic-related lockdowns.
The land of “free market” is a joke lol
You can’t freely compete with near slave labor conditions and zero environmental regulations. . .
China makes the US look like the EU in comparison for those things.
No but it does show how much capitalism relies on the absolute exploitation of the labor market and the double-standards from the US in that regard. Free market good but only when US companies are the ones fucking everyone over.
At least the EU doesn’t constantly brag about muh freedom and how the free market is the best thing ever and you’re a commie if you don’t agree that capitalism is the best.
Yeah pretty damning for how bad China is if that’s considered better.
A little older article regarding Foxconn, but should still be relevant.
Not that it helps that Apple and others are enablers of these practices.
arkansas’ use of prison labor seems like it’s trying to compete on the near slave labor front
Didn’t workers make that exact argument when their good manufacturing jobs were being sent to poorer nations? Seems hypocritical that the government allows globalism to hurt the working class as long as it benefits the rich, but suddenly globalism is bad when it hurts the profit margins of our billionaires.
Whatever we understand by a ‘free market’, China must really not complain about a ‘non-free’ market policy not in the U.S. nor in most othrr countries. That would really be hypocritical.